All that that happened
by planet p
Summary: AU; from Bobby's perspective - kinda - what really happened. Bobby's era; Bobby/OC, Jimmy/OC, mentions of Jimmy/Martha; Lyle/Martha


**All that that happened** by planet p

**Disclaimer** I don't own _the Pretender_ or any of its characters.

* * *

_Misery, Nebraska_

_1975_

Ignacia strolled around the side yard and looked around the backyard. Elsie would be at Bingo, she supposed, and Lyle was out of town this time of year. She rounded the shed, leading into the woods. Bobby stood over by a collection of old forty-four gallon drums and wooden pallets that could be lifted up by forklifts in factories. She rushed over and threw her arms around her best friend in a hug. "I wish you could have been there, Bobby, I had the best day," she told him enthusiastically. She was wearing a flower dress because it was her birthday and her mother had threatened her with a hiding if she wore any of those denim dungarees. She laughed, flashing the braces on her teeth. "Fern took me to see the movie theatre. The movie theatre, can you imagine!"

Fernando was her older brother. They didn't get along so well, but she was glad he had taken her to see the movies.

"Just the two of us! We had popcorn, and afterwards he bought me an ice-cream. It was the best day ever."

She pulled away to dig in her bum bag for the sweets her father had gotten her and she had kept to share with Bobby. (Just a couple; he wasn't really a crazy sweets person.)

"I saved you some swee-," she began, a handful of jelly beans clutched in her palm, but she didn't finish, because Bobby had just then kissed her neck. She felt his hands on the back of her legs, on her bottom, and he pulled her right up close to him. The jelly beans fell from her hand and scattered in the dirt, little bright bullets. "Bo-" the last part was muffled by his kissing her.

He pushed a hand up her leg, into the inside of her thigh. His touching her there sent her into shivers.

She tried to brush his hand away, but he had reached where he wanted it to be, and she couldn't move. His hand made her hot and bothered in ways her mother would have given her one Hell of a hiding for. She sighed into the hot summer air.

Bobby backed her into the shed wall with a thud. Her back pressed up against uncomfortable wooden slats, the fact that she was trapped, had barely registered in her mind, when he entered her.

* * *

Bobby stood leant against the wall, Ignacia sitting on a drum. She kicked her legs back and forth against the drum and listened to the sound it made. She stared at the ground, same as Bobby.

She snorted. The girls at school said she was a dyke.

She slid off the drum, the hem of her dress skirt riding up into the small of her back before she leapt away from the drum.

"That was fun!" she told Bobby, and kissed him on the cheek, before she had to run. "Be seeing you," she called back. Her mother would kill her if she wasn't back for tea.

* * *

Elsie brushed shadow on her eyelids with her finger and giggled, smearing eye shadow on Bobby's cheek as he was fixing her lipstick. Her mother had taught her the importance of appearance at a very early age and she meant to set a good example for her own son. A good woman was always presentable. "You, you're always fussing over me!"

Bobby looked up at her for a moment. He had never been a very talkative boy. Elsie had never been bothered by his shyness as a child, but now that he was older, she found herself a little unsure. She never knew what he was thinking.

"What's on your mind?" she shot, teasing.

Bobby ran a thumb across her bottom lip to even out her lipstick. "I was thinking how much more beautiful you are when you smile," he replied in a plain voice, finally looking up into her face as though, she imagined, in expectation of her response.

Elsie laughed. "You're a funny sort, Robert Joseph Bowman!"

Bobby made no reply. Elsie wondered if he was not upset. He could get like that.

Elsie leant forward and reached past the teenager for her cigarettes. Straightening up, she smiled and placed a quick kiss on his cheek. Retrieving her lighter from the half empty cigarette packet, she looked up and caught her son's frown, and swatted him on the shoulder, giving him a little wink. He looked away.

Elsie watched the window for some time, her mind on Bingo. She imagined it would be quite as boring as it was every other week. She looked back when Bobby brushed her ear with the hair brush, in mind of giving him a little jibing reprimand, and burst into giggles, pulling the sleeve of her cardigan up to wipe the eye shadow from his cheek.

Bobby backed into the basin, watching her with caution, and she stumbled forward, lost in giggles.

"You- you've got a little- on your-" Her words were lost to the giggles. She shook her head at her own silliness.

Bobby wasn't taking his eyes off her and she wondered if she scared him.

"You're such a silly boy," she told him emphatically, and then she laughed again. In between him watching her and she watching him, she stopped laughing in her head. She wanted him to hold her. No one ever held her anymore. She kissed him instead, it felt much better.

* * *

Bobby worked after school at a mechanics shop in town. He had started at the beginning of the year. He knew lots of things about motors.

The shop was well enough big, with a concrete floor, so nothing would get lost in the dirt, with big black oil stains, and he always remembered the right places to put things back when they were done with. The paint on the door was cracked and peeled away in places, glass almost from the very top down to the bottom, and a sign on the wall that read AUTOMOTIVE REPAIRS. They even sold gum and mints (all in rolls, with bright paper and gold letters on the outside, the sort that contributed so much of what they cost to charities) in the poky little office with the counter.

Bobby liked motors, they weren't tricky like people, and they always got fixed if you knew how to go about things.

There were books in the back of the office, a whole row of them, and sometimes Bobby would look at the pictures because he didn't read so well.

He always said, whenever anyone asked, what he wanted to be when he left school, he surely wanted to be an airline pilot for a big company that went all sorts of places he wasn't even sure he would be able to pronounce the names of.

* * *

Ignacia dropped by the mechanics with her big brother. His friend did some job there and Ignacia was just glad to get out of that stuffy house. (Her mother would be on her case again over her choice of clothes.)

Fern stood around talking in the office where his buddy worked; Ignacia, bored, traipsed off out the back and spotted Bobby, who she promptly remembered then had gotten some part-time thing and bounded over.

She grinned and grabbed his arm as though to tug on it. "What are you doing?

Bobby leant his forehead against her own and smiled. "Stuff."

Ignacia rolled her eyes, certainly impressed. "Fern's got this friend who works at the front desk thingy… up there," she put forth, and pointed. "I ain't looking for no job or nothing."

Bobby smiled. "Did you see the mints? I'll get you one."

Ignacia rolled her eyes at his enthusiasm. But that was Bobby when he was happy, all enthusiasm.

* * *

Bobby walked, and for a while the chill morning silence before the day got hot and horrible, was a comfort of sorts. The cold filled something inside that was empty and made it simply no longer empty. He met Ignacia three blocks from the schoolyard. Ignacia was cheerful and gloomy and depressed.

* * *

They sat together in Biology. The teacher had put on a video. Ignacia pinched Bobby on the leg. He pinched her back. Biology was boring her stiff and she wanted Bobby to kiss her and hold her and do those things to her.

Jimmy sat with Chelsea. Bobby and Ignacia and he had used to be friends. But they weren't friends anymore, because Bobby had kissed Jimmy.

Jimmy had told Chelsea and Chelsea had told Ivy and now they said that Ignacia was gay because she hung around the gay boy.

"Do you think they're fucking?" she asked Bobby, who smiled like maybe he was dumb.

Ignacia watched him for a moment.

Jimmy's father, who happened entirely improbably to be Misery's single doctor, out of some obscure little clinic – it _looked_ like a house because it _was_ his house, too; well, part of it was, anyway – had told Jimmy once that he didn't much like Jimmy being friends with Bobby because Bobby was damaged and he would only get Jimmy in trouble, drag his grades down, and then there was the attention thing. Jimmy had told Ignacia once, when they had still been friends, but he had never told Bobby about his father telling him.

* * *

She couldn't stand it anymore. She was going to die of boredom, stop breathing and die. "Bobby, I'm bored."

Bobby twisted his hands in his lap. He was trying very hard to listen and understand, repeating parts of a sentence or a word to himself.

Ignacia got out a pencil and scribbled down the things he seemed to pick up on the best she could. She was no Spelling Bee champion.

She would ask him about them later. He always came up with the funniest things when he couldn't remember something, and books, she remembered how when they had been younger and had had to read the book they had taken home the night before to the teacher to show they had actually read it, or part of it, and Bobby had made stories up by looking at the pictures.

* * *

The girls were changing in the change rooms. They had sport.

"You two gays do gay things together?" Ivy jibed.

Ignacia showed them her rude finger. "Het-er-o-sex-ual, you suck! How can it be gay if we do it together?"

Chelsea squealed, disgusted. Ivy shot her a horrible glare.

Ignacia pretend lunged at them. She growled loudly and laughed at Chelsea's scared face.

* * *

Bobby's house was at the very end of Parilla Road, Number 19, nothing that way but trees. They sat out in the woods and Ignacia asked him about the notes she had taken in Biology.

Bobby liked the woods and Ignacia didn't mind them because Bobby liked them.

"You're such a retard," Ignacia laughed, but she didn't mean it in the way everyone else meant it.

Bobby tugged the piece of folded paper out of her hands. She had torn it out of her exercise book and stuffed it in a pocket of her slacks. He took one look at the words and fell back on the ground. "Man…!"

Ignacia took the piece of paper back and put on a matter of fact voice in imitation of the narrator of the video cassette they had watched in class and proceeded to explain what she had understood of the video.

* * *

_1977_

Jimmy had a pick-up. Ignacia would whine and whine and punch him in the arm but he would never let her ride with him in it.

But then one day, after school, he called out that he was going to teach her to drive, and she smacked Bobby in the arm as if to say "see you" and ran across the road before Jimmy changed his mind.

He winced when she crunched the gears and her legs were almost too short for the pedals, but she didn't care because she was having so much fun. He took her to some back road where she couldn't do much damage, and let her practise her driving there.

Jimmy put his hand on her leg and sighed. "Look, Ignacia-" Ignacia braked – he nearly smacked his head out on the windshield – and looked across at him, "I guess what I'm trying to say is-" He sighed again. "We're friends right?"

Ignacia grinned, widening her eyes. He was letting her drive his pick-up. Sure they were friends! "Yeah!"

"I guess what I'm trying to say is- I care for you, Ignacia." He seemed relieved, having said it.

Ignacia punched him in the arm. "Yeah." She laughed.

He leant across and kissed her. She stopped laughing.

* * *

"You want some music?" he asked, watching her unbutton her shirt.

Ignacia grinned. "Yeah!"

He leant over and twisted the volume dial which switched the radio on. It was tuned to a station some place where they played modern music.

Ignacia finished unbuttoning her shirt – a grubby white thing, far too baggy, not the polo the school uniform dictated should be worn – and Jimmy stared for a moment. The way she dressed, he hadn't quite imagined she would look much under that. "You like them?"

He shook his head. "I like them."

She couldn't stop grinning.

Jimmy unbuttoned his pants and pulled her on top of him, burying his face in her breasts.

* * *

She was pressed against the side door, panting hard. It was dark outside now. Jimmy sat back, pulling his slacks back up. He looked across at her as he did his buttons. "You better be getting home, huh?"

Ignacia nodded, her chest still heaving. "Yeah," she said, out of breath.

"Where can I drop you off?" he asked as she moved past in front of him.

She found her undies and pulled them on.

Jimmy started the engine and put the car into gear, leaving Ignacia to pull her things on before driving off. "Ignacia?"

"Jells Road."

Jimmy shot her a wink. "Sure thing, babe."

She smiled, feeling suddenly rotten.

When they reached Jells Road, she leant across and kissed him. She watched the pick-up disappear and sat down on the pavement, miserable. She had hoped he would ask her to tea seeing as how she had missed her own. She cussed in Spanish and started off home.

* * *

"Bo-bby." Ignacia ran up to him and hugged him from behind. They met up walking to school, almost every day for two years. She let go of him and walked backward for a while, watching him carefully. "You're not talking." And she knew how he could never stop.

Ignacia stuck her tongue out at him. If he wanted to be like that that was his problem.

* * *

Ignacia looked across at Bobby in Mathematics. "I fucked Jimmy," she whispered in his ear. "You jealous? You wanted to fuck him?"

The Maths teacher, Marvin, who fancied Bobby's mother, shot them a sharp look.

Ignacia smiled sweetly and dropped her eyes to the exercises in her textbook. She stomped on Bobby's foot under the table.

* * *

She backed him into a shelf in the town library, the whole grade had walked down after lunch. He shoved her away and stormed off. The teacher went to stop him at the door and he just ignored her.

"Gay suck!" Ignacia screamed across the library. The teacher could give her detention. She didn't give a fuck.

* * *

She stayed after school for detention and scrubbed tables in the science room. Bobby had gone home apparently, because he hadn't come back to school. She hoped he fucking died!

* * *

She walked down the street to Cutter's. Jimmy was there with Chelsea, Ivy and Coby. She ordered herself a Coke with ice and tropical cordial – anything with pineapple or mango – and sat down by the window.

Jimmy walked over and sat down on a chair opposite her. She noticed how Chelsea was watching her and couldn't be bothered to stick up her rude finger.

"What was all that about earlier?" he asked, leaning across the table. She wanted to tell him the same thing she had told Bobby, to fuck off. He touched her hand. "You're okay, right?"

She looked up into his face. He was frowning. "Yeah," she replied harshly. She was okay now that he was watching her like _that_, pretending as though he was concerned for her because he wanted to find out what "all that" was about earlier.

"That's good." He nodded. "I'm glad."

Ignacia took a last sip of her half drunken Coke. "I gotta go." She pulled her hand free of his hold and stood.

"It was real nice talking," he called after her. "I'll see you tomorrow."

She walked on out of there and forced herself not to hear Chelsea and Ivy's stupid giggles.

* * *

She found Bobby sitting out in the woods, head on his knees. She walked over there and kicked him one. "I hate you!" she screamed.

Ignacia paced, hating him for a long while.

He could get to being like this, all quiet the way death was, no, not the horrible screaming of the tortured, that was dying. Death was quiet. It spoke in whispers and sighs and welcomed in a strange quiet, the way one would suddenly realise, and it would seem so odd, and almost funny, because there was finally an end to movement, an end to that constant rise and fall, no more breath.

She hated his guts. But that never stopped her caring. She hated him even more for it, but she had to stop pacing.

He had been biting on his fingers again and Elsie had put a sticky plaster on one where it had bled, the sort with little pictures on it like spacemen, and he had chewed on that even.

She threw herself down behind him and sat. She couldn't hear him breathing. It was silly, the way he had always tried to listen to the earth breathing as a small child, but she needed to hear it. She crawled forward and placed her ear to his back and hugged him and that was how she knew they were still friends.

* * *

Bobby always went to Summer Camp over the summer vacation. He had since he had started seventh grade.

"I'm not going," Bobby told her in a wavering voice, brushing at his eyes with the heel of his palm for something to do with his hands. He had straightened his curls that same year and liked tucking his hair behind his right ear. He was left-handed. He took a breath. "And he can't make me."

They were sitting on the pier on the river out through of the woods. The municipal had put in some tables and the likes, tourism they said, when Ignacia was three and Bobby two, and now it was just some unvisited tourist spot, roads going here and there through the trees.

Ignacia kicked her feet about above the water. "Tell him you're not going. You can stay with me over the vacation."

Bobby laughed, almost as though he was hypo.

Ignacia looked across at him. She got to her feet. "I'm going to tell him right now. He can't make you do anything you don't want."

Bobby scrambled around and got in front of her and grabbed her arm. "I'll tell him," he blurted. "I will. I'll tell him."

Ignacia narrowed her eyes in scepticism.

He kissed her on the lips. "I'll tell him," he repeated.

Ignacia shoved him back, away from her. "You better run, cos if I catch you, I get to have you." Bobby watched her for a moment. She mouthed, "Run".

He ran.

* * *

Ignacia leant against the partition between the cubicle doors, Bobby sat on the edge of the sink. He passed her a cigarette. They had Maths and seeing as neither of them could be stuffed they were hanging out in the girls' toilets smoking Elsie's cigarettes.

"You tell him then?" Ignacia asked, leaning forward to pass the cigarette back. Bobby looked away to the far wall and didn't reply. Ignacia took another drag and coughed. She supposed that meant he hadn't. "You gotta tell him, Bobby."

Bobby slid off the sink. "No I don't." He looked up into her face. "I'll run away."

Ignacia snorted. She doubled over and stumbled forward from laughter.

Bobby turned away and walked to the far wall and leant his head against the wall.

Ignacia went around opening all the windows wide.

He turned back from the wall. "I'll take you with me! If you want to go?"

Ignacia grinned, pushing out a window. "Bobby, you don't even have a car," she told him, hoping that he would forget all this silliness.

"We'll take Jimmy's."

Ignacia smacked her hands over her face and laughed. "Holy shit!"

"I'll be lonely on my own. Come with me, Ignacia."

Ignacia pushed out another window. She grinned. "The fuck! Let's run away!" She ran over and hugged Bobby, attempting to lift him off his feet and spin him around. She put him back down and snorted. "Holy shit! That used to work." She screamed loudly, ecstatically. Four weeks and they were out of this shit hole!

* * *

Elsie worked at the hairdresser's in town and her husband was a big important bank manager. Two weeks before summer vacation Lyle always went out of state for work.

* * *

Ignacia stared at the chart tacked up under her bed, torch in hand. She was late by five days. She smacked her head down on the bare floor and swore in Spanish. She hit herself in the head with the torch. She deserved it.

* * *

Saturdays, Bobby helped his grandpa, Joe, up at the farm, and got back around four. Joe dropped him off at the front of the house and left again. He had some things to pick up in town still.

* * *

A note was stuck to the fridge door with a magnet when he came inside. It was Elsie's writing, so that meant she was held up and wouldn't be back for some time yet.

He collected up the dishes from last night and set them in the sink. He checked the kitchen window ledge for soap, the kitchen cupboards and the laundry.

He couldn't use the soap from the bathroom because that was Elsie's special soap, so he thought he might check outside by the back step where there was a tap for the garden.

It wasn't by the step, so he walked around the shed to where the old rusted fridge with the bottom shelves taken out was. He should have some soap in there.

"Shit!"

The voice startled him and he looked around suddenly.

The young woman ran a hand over her hair, tied back in a pony tail. She wore some sort of uniform, as though she were from a private school. The symbol was embroidered onto her t-shirt. She took a couple of breaths and turned on the spot.

Bobby let his hand fall from the fridge door and started toward her.

She ran into the woods. Bobby ran after her.

* * *

He was almost close enough to touch her, but then he tripped and she was gone. He kicked at the ground and started off back for the house.

* * *

He was twenty metres or so from the shed when he heard shouting and started to run.

His father's car was parked around the side of the yard. He took a deep breath and noticed Jimmy's pick-up.

The shouting was coming from inside the house.

Lyle wasn't supposed to be back for some days still. He had no idea why Jimmy was here, but he supposed he should find out.

By the way they were shouting it sounded serious and he didn't like Jimmy being around Lyle when he was in one of those moods. And then he thought that Ignacia had told Jimmy about their plan to run away and Jimmy had come to yell at him instead of Lyle.

He started for the back door but it was thrown open and Jimmy stormed out. He said he was going to go to the police, that Elsie had told him things, and there was no way he could stop him.

Bobby stopped short of knocking him over. Jimmy shot him the strangest look. Bobby couldn't do anything but stand there. What were they yelling about?

Lyle came out, walked straight past Bobby as though none of this had anything to do with him and grabbed Jimmy and spun him around.

"Get your fucking hands off me!" Jimmy shoved him away from him.

All the noise hurt Bobby's head.

Lyle laughed suddenly. "You're fucking my wife, boy?"

Jimmy lunged forward and punched him. Lyle stumbled back and fell over. "You're no husband!" Jimmy shouted, headed for his pick-up once more. "You don't deserve Elsie!"

"You're fucking my wife." Lyle got to his feet and grabbed Jimmy away from the door and thumped him into the side of the pick-up and started punching him.

Bobby ran over to try to stop him. He grabbed him from behind and dragged him back. Jimmy lunged at the pair, seizing his opportunity. "You're no husband who would hit his wife! I call that fucking scum!"

Lyle threw Bobby off him and he fell over in the dirt.

"You're scum!" Jimmy was saying, and he was kicking Lyle and kicking him and kicking him. "You're fucking pathetic!"

"Stop it," Bobby pleaded in a whisper.

Jimmy laughed and kicked Lyle again. "I thought you were my friend, Bobby. You're no better. You let him hit your mother. You never do anything about it."

"STOP IT!" Bobby screamed.

Jimmy glanced down at Lyle and laughed. That ought to give him something to think about! "You wanna give me a shot? Huh? Bobby? Old friend?" He shook his head, laughing, and turned away. He was going to get out of here and he was going to find Elsie and then _they_ were going to the police. "Go back inside, Bobby. This has nothing to do with you," Jimmy told him from the pick-up. "This is between us adults."

Jimmy started the pick-up and glanced down to put her into gear. The gear shift really needed fixing one of these days.

* * *

Elsie slammed on the brakes when she saw her husband's car back. Jimmy would have come to look for her when she hadn't turned up to meet him at the point they had chosen. She kicked the car door open and ran for the house.

Jimmy was reversing the car.

She spotted her husband and Bobby and knew that there could be no turning back. "Oh shit!"

Jimmy stopped the car and leant across to pull open the door for Elsie, who had run over to see him.

Bobby grabbed his father, who had gotten up now, gun in hand. He spun around and smacked the boy across the face with his gun. Bobby fell back and smacked his head on the stump of an old tree that was used as a chopping block.

Lyle strode forward, toward the car, turned and shot Jimmy in the head, twice. Bam. Bam. "Out of the car now," he ordered his wife.

Elsie got out of the car. There was really nothing else she could do.

Lyle swung his arm out and hit her across the face, having put his gun away. Elsie lost her balance but was stopped from falling over when Lyle grabbed a handful of her hair. "You stupid woman!" He dragged her back toward the house and threw her away from him. "The boy, I need him."

Elsie fell on the ground, sobbing.

"We'll start again, just the three of us, but first-" He growled and shot a glance in the direction of Jimmy's pick-up with dead Jimmy inside it. But first there was some business to attend to.

Elsie grabbed for her child and hit him about the face, held in her arms. "Bobby? Bobby, you have to wake up now."

* * *

Lyle had Bobby help him with disposing of the body, and then the car.

The head had to be separated from the body so that there was no evidence of a shooting, or the bullets or weapon that had been used. An axe was used.

A hole was dug in the woods and the body was buried there.

The pick-up was dumped in a dam some way out of town. It was a deep dam. Likes nobody would ever find it again.

Elsie stayed up at the house. She had packing to do. They were going away, and they were never coming back.

* * *

Bobby helped his mother put the things in the car, her own car.

His father had them all meet in the kitchen. They had some things to discuss before they left.

Bobby wasn't very well. That was Elsie's fault. If she co-operated they could get out of here, and then maybe the boy could see a doctor out of state. It wasn't fair that the boy be punished for her mistakes.

The boy had his own mistakes to answer to.

And when all that was seen to, they could be a family again.

* * *

Elsie was outside, packing the car with Bobby. She stopped him and stroked the side of his face. "My boy." She smiled faintly and returned to her packing.

Lyle strode over. He had been on the phone. He took a handful of Elsie's hair and pulled her around to face him. "I didn't hear you say 'Welcome home', wife."

Elsie winced and put on her best cheerful voice. "Welcome home, husband."

He slapped her across the face, adding another bruise to her collection. "You call _me_ husband, but you fuck some _boy_ who now, because of you, is dead!" He laughed, and smacked her against the side of the car, and kissed her, his hands travelling over her body. It had been a long time since he had touched his wife like that, and he had missed it.

Behind him, Bobby held a needle. He brought the needle up and stuck it into his father's neck with the muscle relaxants for his fits. Lyle's hand slid from his wife's leg and he collapsed on her feet.

Elsie stood perfectly still.

Bobby dropped the needle and fell to the ground. He took his father's gun and stood. "You should go now, mummy," he said.

Elsie nodded and stepped over her husband and pulled the car door open. She started the engine and drove off and didn't stop.

* * *

Bobby fell down on the motel bed and cried and cried and cried until he cried himself to sleep.

* * *

Ignacia woke and dressed herself for school, not knowing that she would have to face the last semester of her high school education alone, without any friends, and pregnant, without a father for her baby.

* * *

**This was written in 2007, it might've been kinda lame; but thanks for reading. Reviewing would make me happy. (Flames, too. If you feel like it.)**


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